Posts from — May 2008

The Star newspapers posted an article today in their Weekender section (page W22) providing some input on tricks and trends for the home. It exclaims that ’small spaces are merely figments of your imagination but with colour, furniture and storage, one can make any small space look spacious’. Hmm, if small spaces are figments of one’s imagination, why would anyone need to do anything to make any area more spacious? Strange sentence isn’t it?

Here’s another strange one… in that article you’ll also find a cut-out coupon to redeem a free cup of coffee at Espressamente which is valid for the 24th and 25th of May only, posted on 31st May’s papers!

However, the article is still worth a quick read if you’re already going to read the papers today (alternatively, you can read the article online by clicking here).

There’s also a mention of the an upcoming home fair that will be held at the Pavilion Kuala Lumpur from June 19-29. Many of the stores in the ‘HOME’ section at the Pavilion sell designer furniture and as you can expect, at upmarket prices. However, it may be worth a visit for you never know what you could get at bargain or discounted prices. Besides, you could always walk home with an idea or two from it.

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Sigh… haven’t had the time to go for the Interiors Malaysia 08 fair yet. It’s already 4pm and I just got home, and in another hour, it’ll be time to go to Church, then CheeHong’s wedding dinner at the Oriental Pavilion (this is no food blog, but FYI, the food’s pretty good there). CheeHong was my uni mate and one of the HengTai’s at my wedding (see my wedding pictorial blog. Looking forward to seeing my uni mates and other friends there tonight. Congratulations, Chee Hong! Will have a big toast to ya with the lads in a few hours time.

So many designers, so many marvellous creations and this is just another one of them- Casulo: mobile living furniture created by Marcel Krings and Sebastian Mühlhäuser. You’ve only got to watch the following video to be totally amazed.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYCTcPkIIBI]

See… what’d I tell you about being amazed by this crazy ingenious project? Right now, this is only a prototype but the duo have plans for mass producing Casulo for the retail market. I don’t really see it happening for the local market though- but hopefully we’ll be fortunate enough to see a live version of the Casulo some time in the future. Actually, I beg to differ. If Casulo is priced reasonably, i foresee a huge market for it here in Malaysia- ‘My maid uses Casulo furniture… designer wan lah… what does yours use? Hah? You buy from kedai perabot Cheecheongfun ah? Good meh?’. In fact, it’s also great for insecure/unstable married couples- avoid potential long and tiresome disputes over who gets to keep what in the house as and when they split. Hey, Casulo designers, I offer my services to help write business plan for you to bring Casulo here to Malaysia lah.

BTW, this info was provided to me by my good friend and avid youtube surfer, Adrian Schmitter. It’s great to be getting input from a fellow reader. For those of you out there with ideas you would like to share, feel free to share them here on How’sHouse. I’ll try to create an input box or proper ‘contact me’ section soon. Meanwhile you can email me at adrian.e.how@gmail.com if you’ve anything interesting to share.

Interiors Malaysia is a trade fair where our local home grown architects, constructors and interior designers exhibit and showcase their works. This is the second installment and will be held from 29thMay – IstJune at the Putra World Trade Centre (click here for location map). Admission is FREE. I can’t make it today because of work but I’ll definitely try to make time to go for it during the weekend. I sure hope that there’ll be loads of interesting items on display at the fair. Hopefully, I’ll end up with a few new items for the house too.

For more information, click here or the image below to visit the official website.

I’ll be posting more about the fair after my visit this weekend. For those of you who have gone, feel free to leave your input and comments, especially on good deals and steals that you wanna share with us all.

While still drooling over the Pick Chair, I found this and thought that I simply must share this on How’sHouse. It’s called Cube6, designed by Japanese designer Naho Matsuno (click here for Naho’s site). Cube6 is another ingenious space saving piece of furniture- starts out as a cube/block that can double as a side table in any room, which can be split into six parts to form six chairs. Not too sure about the comfort feature here but sure is another neat way to stow your chairs when they’re not being used.

photos courtesy of www.nahomatsuno.com

There’s also a Cube3 variant. For Naho’s other works, check out his site at www.nahomatsuno.com

I came across this and thought it was simply brilliant. Designed by Dror Benshetrit, this piece is simply marvellous for owners of small apartments. Heck, it’s just great for anyone who wants a conversational piece of furniture in their place.

Presenting the Pick Chair:

What did I tell you? Brilliant, isn’t it? Aesthetic and yet, totally functional. Great way to store extra chairs. Surprise your guests by pulling your art from the wall and transform it into a chair for them to sit on.

photos courtesy of studiodror

I haven’t seen anything quite like it being sold locally. Even if it is, it can’t be cheap. Dror is selling their Pick Chair for a whopping USD1,800! Wonder if someone will find a way to D.I.Y this anytime soon.

If any of you come across something similar being sold locally, pleeeaasee let me know! I can’t help but love this design concept.

Whilst my wife was looking for a new pair of jeans at Promod at 1Utama, I looked around and saw:

• Guys who looked very bored and out of place whilst waiting for their wives/girlfriends to finish their shopping. These are the same guys that when they catch you staring at them, start acting all macho and LLB (look-like-busy) by playing with their mobile phones or other gadgets, trying to tell you ‘Eh, I’m not like you lah, waiting on your girl whilst she shops… I have other things to do also leh’
• And this… a wall plastered with picture frames of different sizes. The storelady was gracious enough to allow me to take a photo with my camera phone

This is a real good idea for those of you with a wall which needs decorating, whilst at the same time tell the story of your life in pictures. A setup like this would not cost very much at all, at most approx RM300 to cover up a reasonably large area of your wall. You could go to IKEA and choose between the RIBBA (black frame, 1″ thick side profile) or NYTTJA (various colours, 0.3″ side profile).

The RIBBA frames cost a little more but definitely look classier, with a more designer frame feel. Just to give you an idea, the RIBBA 5R frame sells for RM19.90. With RIBBA, all you have to do is buy frames of several sizes and start arranging them any way you like. Start with a focal centre point when hanging your frames as your wall-o-memories could expand and span more wall space over time.

NYTTJA frames are much cheaper hence a less high quality finish to the wood. For RM13.90 you can purchase a pack of 2x NYTTJA 5R frames. I did not see any black NYTTJA frames when I was IKEA last weekend but figured if I were gonna use NYTTJA over RIBBA, then I’d be painting them black with acrylic paint (see ‘Affordable Art‘ post).

Do plan ahead and draw a rough sketch of how you want your initial set up to be before heading to IKEA. Bear in mind that you still have to print your digital pictures to fit the frames and the larger the print, the more it costs.

Definitely a good way to display family pictures or the milestones in your life captured on camera.

Want a simple yet elegant piece of accessory that will be the talking point when your guests notice it? Introducing… the Invisible Book Shelf. I first saw this on Chiasso- an American home furnishing retailer- selling for USD15-18.

Since I couldn’t find something like this locally here in Malaysia, I decided that there had to be a way to make this. In essence, it’s only an L-hook which is secured to the wall and the first book, serving as the base of the shelf. Apparently, some other person had thought the same thing, but went one step further by doing it and posting instructions on the web at Instructables (click here for full set of detailed instructions for creating your own D.I.Y invisible book shelf).

See also: An instructable for a variation of the invisible book shelf

I’m glad that there are others out there who share ways and methods for getting designer accessories for a fraction of the cost. Have fun creating your invisible book shelf!

After all the renovation and carpentry works were done, I got my furniture and appliances in and the house was then fully functional. Then I looked at my walls and noticed how bare they were. I told myself I needed to hang up some modern art to give life to the walls and add colour the place and hence, began my search for art pieces.

Several art stores later, I realised that I was never going to be able to buy anything I liked (ooh, and there was so much I liked) simply because they were priced too steep. A small 12″x12″ hand painted canvas could cost upwards of RM500 (trust me, I knew better than to go to designer art stores and these were stores selling local artists’ wares)… there had to be a better way to get my hands on some art to hang up on my walls.

Get my hands on some art I did… by getting my hands dirty! The answer to affordable art is to D.I.Y. I was recommended by a friend to get my art supplies from Win’s Art and Stationery Supplier- a mom and pop store in Taman Mayang that used to cater to the bulk of students before Lim Kok Wing College moved relocated to its new premises.

Win’s Art & Stationery Suppliers
No 17-1, ( Ground Floor ) Mayang Plaza,
Jalan SS26/4, Taman Mayang Jaya,
47301 Petaling Jaya.
Tel : 03-7062178

What did I purchase from Win’s?

1. Several brushes of different sizes (approx <RM10 for all, avg RM1.50-RM3 per brush depending on size). Make sure you get brushes for acrylic painting.

2. A palette (RM5)

3. 6 different tubes of acrylic paint- varying colours: Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, White, Black (RM4 per tube) for Reeves brand

4. Some blank stretched canvas (already stretched and framed).

• 4″x4″ = RM4
• 6″x6″ = RM6
• 12″x12″ = RM10
• 24″x36″ = RM20
• the great thing is that you can also custom create a frame with your own measurements. Approx 3 working days (depending on workload)

Now, throughout my schooling years, art has never been my forte. I consistently scored ‘D’s and showed no promise whatsoever to my art teachers that I had even an inkling of any artistic flair within me. The high point in art during primary school for me was when I got graded a ‘B’ (yes, my all time high) when I made a shoe from plasticine. I reckon it’s only because I was paid attention to details and put in great effort to make the laces and sticking them onto the shoe.

I did not despair despite my previous forages in art had shown that I was a no-hoper in this field. There was always a form of art that I could venture into, the kind that suits a modern home- ABSTRACT art! Since I could not pain proper shapes, human form, fruits, animals, scenery… why not just paint geometric motives or splatter and mix colours on a palette

With my initial startup cost of under RM50, here’s what my wife and I came up with. We also painted some RM2.50 frames from IKEA whilst at it.

After a rather successful first attempt, I got excited about the possibility of really creating my own unique art to be hung up on my own walls. At the end of the day, I recognise that my art does not look like the work of an artisan but I am contented that I put a piece up on my wall for a small cost and it is a totally and truly unique piece of art. Here’s more of our work:

This is a 3 piece (4″x4″ canvas) piece which can fit horizontally or vertically in any small area. Good to be placed in bathrooms, or a long thin strip of empty wall e.g. between door frame and window frame.

This was done on 24″x36″ and is currently hanging against the wall at the split-level of my stairs from ground to first floor, right under a lamp.

You can get art ideas from sites such as drawn.ca and ffffound.com

Alternatively, there are other local initiatives to help people purchase art at affordable prices and one such event is ‘Art for Grabs‘ held at the Pasar Seni where art pieces are all below the RM100 mark. The first event has passed but due to the reception that KakiSeni (the guys who organised it) got, they’re planning for more such events.

Go ahead, try out your hand at D.I.Y painting! Head on over to Win’s Art.

Sun Jars are growing ever more popular within the designer lighting circle. Here’s an example of a Sun Jar sold at the A+R Store- an American online designer furniture retailer.

photos courtesy of A+R online store

I really like the warm glowing effect that emanates from an ordinary everyday cookie jar. What a cool concept. As usual, novel items like these are hard to acquire in the local market and I wouldn’t want to pay an arm and a leg for shipping fees for purchasing it over the internet (USD42, not inclusive of shipping fees). Fortunately for me, I came across Paranhos’ instructable (click here) on how to create a home made Sun Jar. Simple and easy at a fraction of the cost.

You can get the jar at IKEA for under RM15 and as for the electronic components, pop by Jalan Pasar where there are plenty of shops carrying electronic components… as well as imitation batteries, if you’re wondering where to get em.

Came across this ingenious and totally economical method for creating a vase, from an egg carton at www.oiti.com.br.

Some baby breath and a nice looking egg carton is all you need. You’ll probably have to pop by Cold Storage where they sell more ‘mahal’ eggs which come in nicer packaging (well, the vase still costs you nothing but time, but the eggs’ll cost you more… unless you don’t mind the LTK Omega carton which is a pale white).

As for the metal rings at the top of the ‘vase’, you can get these from local arts & craft stores for a few cents (okay, so the vase technically doesn’t cost you nothing)

And voila… there you go, an egg carton vase. Unique yet unpretentious.

Check out oiti for other interesting designer ornaments. I especially like the tonton chair- methinks it’s brilliant but I’m not going to feature it in my blog since it can’t be purchased locally OR I haven’t figured out a way to ‘make’ this using cheaper methods.